


Test failed.

by snekwami



Category: Splatoon
Genre: Gen, Octo Expansion Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 19:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15154250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snekwami/pseuds/snekwami
Summary: Agent 8 tries to pass her driving test. Unfortunately, C.Q. Cumber is her driving instructor.





	Test failed.

**Author's Note:**

> My little brother came up with the idea for this and suggested I write it, so here I am! I should write Splatoon fics more often, hehe. (Catch us on Splatoon 2 - I'm Aish and he's Prath09)

Agent 8 sat in her car, waiting. When she had first arrived in Inkopolis she’d never seen one of these before in person. To think that within just a few short months, she had learnt to drive one! Full freedom was almost here. There was just one step left before she could hit the road for real and go anywhere she wanted.

Her driving test.

It was a clear, sunny afternoon, the heat shimmering off the road ahead of her like an inky mirage. Hopefully that wouldn’t cause visibility problems. Her phone buzzed in her hand with yet another message of good luck wishes – Cap’n Cuttlefish, Pearl, Marina, and even the elusive Agent 3 had been sending them to her throughout the day. All it did was make her more nervous. She shoved the phone in her pocket and wiped her hands on her skirt, taking deep breaths, then took hold of the steering wheel in front of her.

The passenger door opened. Agent 8 turned to take a look at her examiner, but there didn’t appear to be anyone there at all. She had been expecting an inkling, or perhaps even a jellyfish, not an empty space!

“Good to see you again, Agent 8. I will be your driving examiner for today.”

No…

That voice sent shivers down her back. Surely it couldn’t be…?

But it was. The tiny blue slug-like creature she had been dreading was crawling up onto the passenger seat.

“C.Q. Cumber,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he replied in that monotonous, callous voice of his.

Agent 8’s hands were already starting to shake on the wheel, so she gripped it tighter and took another breath to steady her nerves. Alright, so this little blue bundle of terror was her examiner. Fine. She had handled him for eighty metro stations, hadn’t she? She could do this!

But those metro stations… oh, that voice still haunted her.

_You let the 8-ball fall – test failed._

_You contacted enemy ink – test failed._

_A balloon got away – test failed._

Followed by every ink-based creature’s most primal fear coming to life – being splatted helplessly. Yes, C.Q. Cumber never hesitated to blow Agent 8 sky-high whenever she couldn’t complete a test to his standards. Of course, he didn’t _kill_ her, she always respawned nearby. That didn’t make her temporary deaths any less painful, or any less terrifying, though.

Not to mention, thinking about the Deepsea Metro in general was terrifying. It was down there that she had almost been blended into puree like thousands of unlucky Octolings before her, down there that she had to fight a sanitized Agent 3 against her will, down there that the darn telephone had tried to ruin her life. Up here on the surface, she just wanted to forget about it all and move on!

But she couldn’t. Not until she had passed this driving test, and C.Q. Cumber had returned to the abyss from where he came.

“Please begin to drive.” His voice lacked any emotion whatsoever. He had curled himself up around the seatbelt so that he could see over the dashboard.

Agent 8 pushed down on the accelerator and let the car inch forward. Agent 3 had teased her for wanting to drive in heels, but hey, these were the heels she had escaped the underground in. Driving in them didn’t turn out to be too much of a problem. And plus, they looked nice, didn’t they?

“Please drive to the end of the road and turn left.”

Agent 8 did as she was asked, ignoring how her heart raced at hearing that creepy voice again. It brought back memories of pushing 8-balls along narrow paths with Squiffers, of mowing down hordes of sanitized enemies with Splatlings, of taking down a giant octo biker samurai all on her own while that little blue cucumber just watched and judged as she failed over and over.

“Now I would like you to join the main road and drive towards the bridge.”

She cautiously wove her way into the traffic. Every one of her senses was on high alert. An inkling’s loud laughter down the street made her jump in her seat, sweating drops of translucent ink.

C.Q. Cumber directed her to Hammerhead Bridge, then out to the road over Urchin Underpass, where he instructed her to slalom drive through a line of cones he had arranged earlier, taking care not to hit any. Agent 8 slowed down more than she would have liked on this test – playing it safe would be better than taking risks here, even if driving this slowly might potentially cause C.Q. Cumber to fail her too.

After this he told her to drive to the parking area beneath Moray Towers, at which she had to park the car in one of the bays without scraping the sides against the walls. This was something Agent 8 had practiced plenty of times with Off the Hook blasting through the radio to give her strength, so it wasn’t much of a challenge, although the eerie silence (occasionally broken by C.Q. Cumber’s quiet background squelching) put her off quite a bit.

By the time C.Q. Cumber said, “Thank you, please return to the test centre for your results,” the sun was setting and leaving dangerous spots in Agent 8’s eyes. She wiped the sweat off her forehead, brushed her hair out of her face, and began driving back towards the area they had started from.

How had she done? This examiner of hers was too stoic to let her know from his voice or attitude, so she had to judge for herself until he told her. Well, she hadn’t made any big mistakes. In fact, her hyper-anxious state meant that for once she hadn’t made any minor mistakes either. Somehow, her driving today had been even more perfect than it had ever been! (Gee, why couldn’t that happen when she was driving Agent 3 places…?)

The final stretch was filled with more uncomfortable silence, and thoughts crowded her mind, providing a welcome distraction from her nerves.

Maybe C.Q. Cumber wasn’t that bad. He was just doing his job, right? Sure, Agent 8 being constantly splatted when putting one tentacle out of line had sort of conditioned her to be oversensitive to failure, freaking out over the tiniest things she could have done wrong, striving for perfection always. Agent 3 was always telling her to chill out. But it wasn’t C.Q. Cumber’s fault, it was that telephone’s fault for keeping her down there in the first place!

And plus, the little cucumber was kind of adorable in a weird way. He was small, squidgy, his voice high-pitched, and he always made sure to tell her to take care of herself. It seemed he did care about her, even if he was bad at showing it.

Could that make up for everything? Maybe it could. And the thought of having passed her driving test, with flying colours too, was putting her Agent 8 in a charitable mood. Maybe she really could forgive C.Q. Cumber for all those times he had inksploded her for minor infractions. It would be worth it.

The test centre was within sight. Agent 8 let out a sigh of relief, all nerves flooding out of her. She had done it – she had really done it! A straight stretch of road was all that was left between her and total freedom.

Then her eyes drifted down to the speedometer.

No – she was one inkometre above the limit!

She hastily put her foot on the brake pedal to get back under control. Phew. Her eyes slid to the side, wondering if C.Q. Cumber had seen that. Please say he hadn’t, please say just one tiny inkometre wouldn’t matter to him, please say this still meant she passed–

“You drove above the speed limit.”

Uh-oh. She knew that tone of voice very well indeed. It instilled an involuntary reaction in her, one of utter fear. The fate that awaited her was inevitable. She began slowing the car to a stop, the test centre so close yet so frustratingly far, out of reach.

_“Test failed.”_

There it was.

She closed her eyes as the car rolled to a standstill. The sound of an ink bag inflating filled her ears, so familiar and yet so completely terrifying. She knew what came next.

SPLAT.

 

Respawning back in the test centre, she rubbed incoming tears out of her eyes. She had _failed_ – what would everyone think? They had all been so supportive of her! To think that she could save Inkopolis from certain doom, and yet not pass a simple driving test?

The door slammed open. Her eyes dropped down to see C.Q. Cumber crawling in. She turned away again – now was really not a good time. All her forgiveness from earlier had gone, leaving her bitter and full of self-pity. Did one lousy inkometre really mean the difference between passing and failing? Her driving instructor had told her that a tiny bit of speeding didn’t matter!

“Ahem. Agent 8.”

She still refused to look at him.

“I have good news. You have passed your driving test.”

That got her attention. He hopes shot up, but filled with confusion too – what was he talking about? He’d already told her she had failed!

“I was merely joking about you having failed. Driving up to three 3im above the speed limit is acceptable in the form of a minor penalty, and does not result in automatic failure. I was simply amusing myself. A reminder of the old times, down in the Deepsea Metro.”

Amusing himself? She hadn’t even expected him to _have_ a sense of humour. She glared at him, wondering if he could sense the thoughts running through her brain.

“My apologies, I see now that this test meant a lot to you. Perhaps it was inappropriate of me to trick you like that.”

Yeah, it was.

“Your driving licence has been left in your car. Congratulations on passing.”

He didn’t sound enthusiastic at all. Did he care? Did it matter if he cared? He couldn’t just make fun of her insecurities like that and get away with it. No longer down in the metro now, Agent 8 had allowed herself to have more spunk, to grow a personality, to stand up for herself and not blindly follow the orders of others. That was just asking to be blended.

She slowly walked over to C.Q. Cumber, surreptitiously pulling a Luna Blaster out from the holder on the back of her ink tank.

“Test failed,” she muttered. Then she splatted him in one shot.

Sweet, sweet revenge.


End file.
